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128107-why-wildstar-failed-a-tough-love-opinion-from-a-fan-page-2
Page 1, Page 2 Content I'm not. My consistent point has been the Carbine had the goal of giving casuals a great game, even if they missed the mark. As for casuals wanting the same as the hardcore, well that comes down to a definition of "casual". Whatever you want to call ME, I'm not hardcore, and I've currently done all the content the game as to offer except for DS, and I'm sure I'll get there eventually. | |} ---- Untrue. The 'optimal' levelling behavior (never turn in an underlevel mission) for Wildstar is counter-intuitive and often there are missing breadcrumbs (eg. Pell section in Malgrave). Group levelling has similar pitfalls. Yes, a player with prior Wildstar experience can rip through the levelling process. New players fresh to the game will need to learn the paths. | |} ---- Why not? Who are you to dictate that RPer's and Housing people aren't casuals? Unless you can point to some official MMO ruleset that states the specific criteria to make a casual (which excludes Housing Fans and RPers), you're once again confusing your own opinion as fact. I'm a housing person AND our guild is a casual raiding one. Which only raids 6.5 hours a week, and is in DS. And we're hardly elitist min/maxers. So by your own drivel, casuals can raid. Edited June 19, 2015 by Dharnell | |} ---- Early levels are very easy, very casual. But after about level 20 the difficulty does ramp up rather suddenly. Players are expected to interupt, dodge telegraphs and use a fuller range of skills. Mobs get a lot tougher. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, personally I like the challenge although I do remember it was a bit of a shock the first time. Players used to facerolling their way to endgame in other MMOs likely struggled with this difficulty ramp. I think the difficulty curve should have been smoothed out a bit. Not nerfed, just smoothed out. Another problem is the mob density, aggro radius and rapid respawns in most PVE zones, plus the rather chaotic way many quest hubs are designed, bombarding you with quests and sending you all over the place. It makes leveling all very frenetic, chaotic and fast paced. There's not a lot of let up and there's little time to actually admire the wonderful scenery, artwork and quest text (if you don't want to hear the constant drumroll sound effect of mobs aggro'ing you). Wildstar's gameplay can be tiring and it is visually tiring too because of the bright colour palette and high density of detail in most areas, with everything crowded together. These are design decisions of course which you either love or hate. Personally I love the chaos BUT it does mean Wildstar is definitely a game that does not suit long play sessions (for me). Edited June 19, 2015 by Cern | |} ---- I don't consider a month to be ripping through anything... I got an esper to 50 in less time than that right at launch, when the class was still immobile and the quest hubs were about as disjointed as they could be. And I didn't even know or care about the "optimal" leveling path until I was leveling my stalker some time after that. Edited June 19, 2015 by phandaal | |} ---- Well this again comes down to the definition of "casual", because there are casuals who are going to say they LIKE the harder content. How casual are you? My wife took a few months to get leveled to 50, and she was subbed at launch (and hasn't stopped being subbed). I think that's more representative of what casual players are. True, she didn't play every day. But that's kind of the point. | |} ---- ,and that attitude is another cause of the games failure, people like you who refuse to see anything but what yo uwant despite teh obvious problems. if wildstar WAS a better wow, then why did it fail, why did it fail so hard and completely as a P2P game. your argument is wothless as well, because people have been and are leaving WOW all the time, just like how many more return to the game after certain patches and new players start playing the game. that entire "equity" argument is complete and total bs and you know it. when even one of the original, hardcore raiding guilds of WOW said the raids were too hard in a game (and not in a good way), you know a game has screwed up. | |} ---- Back then I played maybe 8 hrs a week? It's been a while so the memory is fuzzy. As I said in another thread I didn't channel my inner neckbeard until I power leveled my stalker to 50 in one weekend. I had very little free time back then because I was getting two Masters in addition to my full time job. I'm certainly aware that some people take significantly longer than others. My brother still hasn't hit 50 despite having subbed since launch. I just don't think they are representative of the average casual gamer. 8 sounds excessive actually. I can't really over stress how little free time I had back then. Edited June 19, 2015 by phandaal | |} ---- Your definition of casual doesn't mean that's the only definition of casual. Your definition of best game doesn't mean that's the only definition of best game. And to the op your definition of failed game doesn't mean that's the only definition of failed game. Edited June 19, 2015 by beattlebilly | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 1. The game was built for the hardcore audience which is actually a tiny group of players who are usually demanding, obnoxious and noisy. Marketting a AAA game towards a niche group of customers is a recipe for failure because this type of game requires hundreds of thousands of players to be successful. A lot of mmos start out as hardcore focused, eventually the devs cotton on to the fact that the casual players are the ones who bring in the money so they make content for both types; SE realised this with FF14 2.0, SWTOR realised when they went f2p, WoW realised it forever ago, WildStar did not realise and paid the price. 2. The development team promised customers that they would be geting their monies worth with monthly content updates then immediately adjusted it to a three month cycle, invalidating the sole justification for the monthly sub cost. The problem is, ARR is offering a AAA experience with a ton more content per quarter and the sub cost is less. CS don't have the beef to punch with the heavyweights and thus most customers decided that their money was better spent elsewhere. In all fairness, there are plenty of free to play games that put out more content than WS does and at the end of the day, it's all about the content. I could list a ton of other things which while more minor, definitely contributed to this games failure; the launch was a mess, optimisation was (and still is) terrible, terrible stat distibution on gear/weapons, class balance was really bad at launch, lack of incentives to do anything other than raiding, lack of things to do other than raiding, attunement was too difficult, world pvp badly handled, no anti bot measures in place, poor Auction house UI, no Christmas/haloween events :(, extremely alt unfriendly, limiting and archaic group finder etc... While some of these things continue to plague the game, imo things are definitely getting better (from a game standpoint, not financial) as time goes on. Contracts were a great addition and finally give non raiders a reason to log in each day. Housing continues to improve and is one of the best examples of it in the genre. If they get this game up on Steam and develop it into a game that the average mmo player wants to play then WildStar will have a very bright future as a free to play game. Firstly though, they need to find the person that came up with this hardcore bullcrap and sack him/her and make sure they don't come within 5000meters of the company ever again. | |} ---- The first raids in this game aren't as hard as you are making out. I understand DS is pretty darn hard, but GA is pretty reasonable on the difficulty curve. And it's more FUN than most of the raids in WoW that I experienced. | |} ---- Stopped reading here, as this is flat out incorrect. There was marketing toward all types of players. If the marketing you saw was toward one audience that doesn't mean it all was. | |} ---- I have not tried raid in WS true....due to attunement...and thats its only lately raids are pugged....but they are pugged by former raiders i presume! You dont realy like wow do you? so ofc you think they are more fun. But i have raided ALOT in WOW (relatively casual and never true progression raiding)...and some of them are realy realy fun:) I have look on youtube videos from WS raids..and tbo..i found vet STL to look cooler...the tech look of the ws raid is way too much for me personally....I though omnicore-1 was rather ugly...but..ofc..thats personal opinions there:) and i have not tried it yet.... | |} ---- GA is like a vet dungeon compared to DS and yes its very cool! We're working on the daemons now, and the challenge is definitely real. | |} ---- Yeah, I'm gonna disagree with you. The word HARCORE was repeated over and over in the early days and video promotions, and you dang well know it. I know you know it, because we were here together. ;) | |} ---- it does not realy matter what they said in the marketing....it WAS a hardcore game at launch...and that prob scared some ppl away...I know it scared me away..the though of the looming attunement stopped me dead in my track at level 44 warrior last time. Now it stopped me at 4/13 attuned as a level 50 SS. | |} ---- Never said they didn't say it. I said they were also saying they had a lot for other types of gamers. What people heard and listened to is on them. | |} ---- What made it hatdcore at launch? | |} ---- Okay, so I remember the Dev Speak video for raids (HARDCORE), adventures (HARDCORE) and warplots (HARDCORE). They had two non-harcore Dev Speak, and that was over Customization and the very early one on Housing. While those things are cool, they aren't really "content" in the traditional sense. All of the CONTENT videos very much pushed the HARDCORE in our faces. Say what you want, but you know as well as I do who this game was "supposed" be catering to since the very earliest days. You remember every suggestion I made to re-tune things being shot down and how many of you guys told me, over and over, this wasn't the game for players like me? I certainly remember it. | |} ---- I agree GA is not puggable by new players. But puggable isn't the standard- you were talking about WoW's raids and raids were NOT puggable by new players at its peak. Actually, I like WoW quite a bit. I had blast back when I played and I have fond memories of the raids. Karahzan and Ulduar were a blast. And what I'm telling you is, videos don't do GA justice- the raids are better (from what I experienced in WoW, I haven't done anything recent). It is FUN- as in really, really fun. More fun than Kara, and that (in my book) is saying a LOT. Now if aesthetics are your judgement by which a raid is "fun" or not, then that's going to be a matter of taste. I know that GA doesn't beat out Karahzan in the "atmosphere" criteria. But in terms of having encounters that you can do over and over again and look forward to it every single week- it beats out even that zone. It's THAT good. I don't know how many times I've killed X-89 thus far, and I've still not gotten to the point that I find the fight boring or uninteresting. Part of that may be because we're always finding new was to screw ourselves over and recover- haha- but that's part of the beauty of it! The retention rate of people I've seen zone into GA and get absolutely hooked on raids in WS is high. VERY high. There have been more than a few people in my guild who were like "meh, I can't make it every week, but I'll come along when you have a slot" who have switched to "I want a full time spot" after their first time in GA. In fact, as a raid leader trying to fill spots, this is my evil plan now. I tell people they don't have to commit, they can just tag along. And then after they do it once, 90% of the players beg borrow and steal to be able to make time for the raid. I cannot stress it enough- GA is probably WS's best selling point. The more people they can get into experience it without nerfing, the better. If that means removing some attunment (like WBs), I'm fine with that. If it means putting in the ability to do it in smaller chunks, I'm all for it. But it's the content that everyone who has ever thought about raiding should give a shot before denouncing it as "too hardcore". I don't care about "hardcore" or "causal". I care a bout fun, and GA has it in spades. /rant Edited June 19, 2015 by SlyJeff | |} ---- I remember it too. Maybe I joined the CBT too late (December 2013) but the echo chamber was in full swing then. It was either "make the game more #hardcore, not easier" or "that's not how the devs planned things, so take a seat, shut up, and let the masters teach you how to have fun." I suggested that gamers weren't as young now as they were back in the day (shocking how that happens) and had more responsibilities than they used to, and because of this they'd have trouble getting anything meaningful from their game time if everything took extra long or had extra RNG in it. The responses were... unsupportive. With the epic failure of the #hardcore model it's become a truism now that people just don't have the kind of time for unlimited gaming as they used to. While I do love being right, I'd rather the game had just launched in the state it's in today. | |} ---- Yup. Thank you. I'd get banned for pointing the fingers at the people who deserve the bulk of responsibility for that echo chamber, but at least three of them still post here on a regular basis. I wonder whatever happened to the dozens of other #hardcore screamers who shouted us down at every chance and called us names and ridiculed us? OH, THAT'S RIGHT ... They LEFT because the game was too #hardcore for them. :lol: | |} ---- You're still in denial about this? This game is notorious for being #hardcore only and it is only just starting to shed that. (contracts, dungeon nerfs..) Marketing doesn't mean crap if the game has no meaningful content for casuals. | |} ---- While I agree with most of your post I think housing is this games hottest selling point if it can reach the right demographic especially if they expand and take it to the next level as well as getting rid of some of the lingering bugs that still plague the feature. Look at the success of minecraft sand box game play is a hot item right now. But the raids are still a good selling point for this game... Edited June 19, 2015 by Rebel Angel | |} ---- ---- ---- "Our elder games are not for wimps. Anyone can level up, but real skilled players might do it more efficiently. They can do combat really well and take advantage of extra experience bonuses. But in the elder game it is not about the casual player, it is about the hardcore guys who really want a challenge." -Jeremy Gaffney (emphasis mine) http://www.mmo-game.eu/wildstar-q-and-a-session-with-jeremy-gaffney/#raid Lemurian, I don't see how you can say something like that when even Gaffney was telling everyone the end game is designed around the hardcore players. Edited June 20, 2015 by vearitas | |} ---- Well, that is a super super old interview (one of the oldest) and had information about racial things like... it's harder for an Aurin to do things a Granok could do. That didn't really happen. But by and large, Jeremy and everyone had always always talked about elder game for all play styles being available. They were just unable to delver on that at launch, which is why they've added things like vet ship hands and contracts since then. They are still working on it... | |} ---- ---- The rental mount is 24 hours of game play time, not real world time, and it's what, 50 silver? That will last you until level 50. unless it takes more than 24 hours of playing to hit cap. And yeah you can use the mounts at level 3. Source: I did it, and am doing it on my Esper alt that I'm currently leveling and isn't level 25 yet. | |} ---- Its true, that is a very old interview. I think it was relevant still, as an example of a dev speaking candidly about their design goals. By "elder game for all play styles" are you talking about the solo content (daily quests, paths, and housing) as the other play styles? I'll be honest, this was the issue that kept me from playing at launch. Back when they revealed the 40 man raids there was a lot of questions about alternative end game content. And the answer they were giving was just that one. They have elder game for all play styles, and then gave only solo content as the alternatives. Which to me was basically saying "you can do hard core 40 man group content or you can go play by yourself". | |} ---- ---- You'll get Aurin Engineers once I get Mordesh and Granok espers.. Like i said weeks ago I will not lets ship sink for non-Aurin exile races!!! | |} ---- Thanks, I appreciate the input. I'm looking forward to doing all of those at lvl 50. The PVP especially, I'm planning to play a lot of. And I've heard really good things about the later drops adding content outside of raiding. My earlier comment came off as more negative than I meant. I'm actually feeling pretty positive with the direction WS is headed now. I think the ftp rush is going to be a huge success for them. But I still think they were overly focused on hardcore raiding when it launched. | |} ---- Thanks for the heads up! I might have a reputation of bashing wildstar but it still interests me god knows why. Yesterday I managed to get the community chatting and I surprised people about how much I didn't know about the game at 50. One piece of advice I was given was to reroll, find a good guild and run sim core quests otherwise they wouldn't be available to me as adventures through group finder. Another hard lesson learnt. I think there lies wild stars biggest problem, the starter community is way too small. Even though guilds say they offer help I've rarely seen a guild do so. This isn't confined to wildstar but every mmo I've played. How I long for the good old days playing daoc on North American servers :) Edited June 21, 2015 by Pazazz | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- The update to be able to use mounts that early was in the last month. If you don't even know that, how was he to know that now mounts are usable at 3? I'm pretty sure he was 25 before June and therefore this change came too late for him. | |} ---- The way he worded it made it seem otherwise. He said he can't use it until level 25 but was able to claim it at level 3. | |} ---- Been that long huh? You can claim the items in the account inventory as soon as you like. He found out about mounts and was off the boat at 3. He clicked and got the items and then found he couldn't use them. It was that was until the recent update. I never had the issue because I was a beta player and knew not to clog up my inventory before 25. I could clog up my inventory with outfits too as early as being off the boat, I just knew better. I love how people got on his case when he said he's been playing for 7 weeks... About a change that just recently happened a couple of weeks back. Without even having a clue when it was implemented. Dude, you don't even read the update notes and yet are quick to scold a new player for not knowing about this new change?! Wow. Harsh community here. --- Good on WildStar for making that nice change. Proves how it was actually an appreciated feature when a player us so irked by its absence. | |} ---- Before the June 2 patch I wasn't able to claim the mounts from my account inventory before I could use them. Maybe he was bugged if he was able to claim them, or I was bugged because I couldn't, but that is what my opinion was based on. If I came off as harsh, I didn't mean to be. I am posting from a tablet and my typing skills on it are abysmal so I am trying to keep things short. Not a dude. | |} ---- ---- ---- I heard somewhere that they might be prepping the game for a China release at some point? I'm not sure if that's just the rumor mill or whatnot, but apparently doing that requires a lot of work in changing game assets to adhere to Chinese standards. Dunno. Anyway, advertisement over here is poor as it is. They need to work on that as well. Get twitch/youtube and other banner ads going, get an article or two on MMO-Champion, get other gaming sites like IGN to pick it back up, etc. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Huh? What missing feature? WildStar was easily the most feature-rich MMO to launch since WoW (which was much more bare bones than WildStar at launch). Seriously curious... what could you possibly call "missing"? | |} ---- Fair point. I would only say that Minecraft does it better, but it obviously doesn't offer all the other things that WS does. But no one offers raids like WS (as far as I know, anyway- I haven't played every MMO). But clearly housing is a solid selling point, and might reach more people than the raids. | |} ---- Someone never did RoS in Black Temple if they wanted to talk about twitch reacitons for kicks.. ... and I don't mean just walking back in at level 90 and rolling the place over. Wildstar also has way more engaging healing.. My old GM used to have private key binds to all the healers in our raid when we would fall asleep he could wake us up with an airhorn. | |} ---- ---- I was gonna say "I agree but you forgot about unannounced game breaking patches" but I see that you tossed that in there too haha. | |} ---- Yeah some of those patches just made everything so much worse, then they had to do back pedal hot fixes. | |} ---- Camera speed, FoV, right click lock (still missing, although there's an addon for it), video options were very limited and then some settings wouldn't save. As far as I see, that problem is still there even now for double-tap dodge and telegraph settings (and I didn't check for other settings). There were many more basic missing stuff, but I can't remember them since it was more than 1 year ago when I last played the game. Either way, the lack of camera speed setting alone was enough to put me off, since I'm used to playing with a very low turning speed and lowering the overall sensitivity meant I couldn't move the mouse properly in cursor mode. | |} ---- What's "right click lock"? | |} ---- ---- Since I started playing yesterday (after over a year, and even then I played it one day), I am as new as I can get and from a new player's perspective, these kind of threads don't put me off and don't make any difference whatsoever. I don't see anyone reading this and saying "oh, I wanted to play the game, but because of this post, I won't". Let people speak their mind, this way at least the devs can see the issues and hopefully fix them. Instead of holding mouse right click, it locks so you don't have to hold it. See the games I referenced earlier, they all have camera lock (since they use mouse buttons for skills, it's obviously not right click, but other button - like ALT) and if you want to use the UI, you press that button to "unlock" it. Edited June 22, 2015 by Brainy | |} ---- Like "smart camera"? Where you turn it off so the camera doesn't auto center when you move if you aren't looking in front of you? Oooooh I think I know what you mean, the camera automatically moves with the mouse without any button press on it. Never messed with that feature on other games so it took me a bit to visualize it lol Edited June 22, 2015 by beattlebilly | |} ---- More like letting you move the mouse and rotate the camera and your character without holding down the right mouse button. | |} ---- Lol yea figured it out :p. Never used it so it didn't click for me right away. | |} ---- ---- Thanks :). I can see it being added as an option, but I don't think it should be a default setting though. | |} ---- The problem, I suspect, is that they thought casuals loved dailies. They seemed really shocked at all the hate dailies got. | |} ---- I think this is accurate. While I do think they intended to make the game casual friendly, they missed the mark on execution. | |} ---- Shocked! Pretty sure it had something to do with the attitude that limited game time equated to being dumb and bad at the game. | |} ---- Indeed. making a game casual friendly doesn't need to mean dumbing the game down. It's about making the game accessible. Making it so that all players can dip in and find something fun and rewarding to do, even if they have a limited amount of time or do not wish to commit to organised group content (i.e. raiding) for whatever reason. You can't build your game around hardcore time sinks and mechanics and then push everyone else to the margins telling them they need to be happy with dailies and messing around with their housing or else find another game to play. Veteran Shiphands are the perfect example of how to do this right. They're fun, bite-sized, can be done solo or grouped, can be challenging if you want to achieve Gold and rewards are decent. There needs to be more content like this. Contracts I'm on the fence about. I quite enjoy them, but they sail dangerously close to just being another form of dailies. Nevertheless, it's welcome content. Dailies have their place, they're a way for players to earn some extra rewards. But they should never be the main focus as they grow tedious very quickly for a lot of players. Personally I'd like to see some more persistent world PVE and PvP content. Long term battles that rage over a period of days that you can dip into, participate and perhaps influence things for as much time as you can spare, with your contribution being noted and rewarded. Sort of like World Events that persist across a longer time period. The problem with current world and zone events is that they either reset too quickly (and so are meaningless) or too slowly (so it's hard to arrive when they are going on). | |} ---- TBH, it depends on your definition. I am seeing (on the forums) more and more frequent requests to make the dungeons, and even raids, easier in the name of accessibility. But Vet Shiphands >>>>>> dalies. It's a shame they had this content developed so far and didn't have it prioritized enough at launch to get it in front of casuals. Edited June 22, 2015 by SlyJeff | |} ---- While i think mmos should have some time sinks.. the game did go a bit overboard with it. there is to many factions to grind rep for just one tier. The contracts is helping lighten this up a bit.. but that doesnt change that there is still to many to worry about.. Elder gem cap should just be lifted since having it is now just a redundancy there is other currencies to have to worry about now. If pvpers can endlessly grind bgs to get their amps and ability points pver's should have their own alternative as well removing the elder gem cap would allow for this. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Such a simple and elegant solution, this would keep everyone happy. Have to wonder why when a solution is this simple it isn't already implemented. | |} ---- Because capping elder currency is #hardcore, therefore it is working as intended and perfect in every way. Just ask around. :lol: | |} ---- ----